tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13707648500321560762019-01-21T11:00:15.183-05:00SUNLIT UPLANDSFaith, Family, Freedom, Renewal of the CultureDaniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.comBlogger6611125SunlitUplandshttps://feedburner.google.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-26489139382469438572019-01-21T11:00:00.000-05:002019-01-21T11:00:15.052-05:00The Catholic Cultural Revival<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a7xxhKt8AcE/XEXrT02QyHI/AAAAAAAAdVw/WaSZVMgOIHMUbyWsCtpNLX8FNvpB3ZB8ACLcBGAs/s1600/Pearce-JAN18.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="519" data-original-width="682" height="304" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a7xxhKt8AcE/XEXrT02QyHI/AAAAAAAAdVw/WaSZVMgOIHMUbyWsCtpNLX8FNvpB3ZB8ACLcBGAs/s400/Pearce-JAN18.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Emmeline Deane, “John Henry Newman,” 1889</span> </td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">One of the most exciting and powerful manifestations of Catholic beauty arose in the Catholic Cultural Revival in England over the past two centuries.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">By Joseph Pearce&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It is twenty years since the late, great John Paul II wrote his Letter to Artists and, as such, it is timely to remind ourselves of the power of Christian beauty to evangelize the culture in which we live. All but the most insensitive of men will admit to, and will admire, the great beauty produced by Catholic culture over the centuries. From the great art of Giotto, Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and Fra Angelico to the great architecture of St. Peter’s in Rome or Chartres Cathedral in France, the Catholic Church has bestowed upon humanity the most magnificent cultural edifices, all inspired by a love of the One True God who is the Greatest Artist of all. In the fields of music and literature, as much as in the fields of art and architecture, the genius of the Church has shone forth in the works of her creative children. From the simple serenity of Gregorian chant to the intricate integrity of polyphony and the rousing passion of Romanticism, from Palestrina, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, to Bach, Mozart and Bruckner, the greatest sacred music continues to resonate in the hungry heart of man. And what is true of music, is equally true of literature. From Dante’s Divine Comedy and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the glorious Middle Ages to the plays of Shakespeare during the throes of the iconoclastic Reformation, Catholic writers have produced truly great Christian literature, putting their words at the service of the Word.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Yet Catholic beauty does not only blossom in the brilliance of the Catholic Middle Ages or in the magnificence of the Catholic Counter Reformation, it blooms also in the midst of the desert of modernity. One of the most exciting and powerful manifestations of such beauty arose in the Catholic Cultural Revival in England over the past two centuries. From its genesis in the rise of English Romanticism at the end of the 18th century to its crowning achievements in the middle of the 20th century, the English Catholic Revival would produce some of the greatest artistic masterpieces of all time.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It all began with the disillusionment of certain English poets with the false promises of the so-called Enlightenment and age of Reason. Poets such as William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge were horrified by the mass murder, known as the Great Terror, that followed in the wake of the French Revolution. Although Wordsworth and Coleridge had initially been attracted by the French Revolutionary cause, the full horrors of its butchery and totalitarianism, carried out in the name of “reason” against religion, caused them to recoil in the direction of Christianity. Both poets rejected their youthful agnosticism and pantheism and embraced Anglican Christianity, expressing their rediscovery of beauty in what became known as Romantic poetry.</span><br /><br /><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Read more at <a href="https://www.ncregister.com/blog/josephpearce/the-catholic-cultural-revival#When%3A2019-01-18+15%3A50%3A01"><i>National Catholic Register</i></a> &gt;&gt;</span></b><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/imp3BUutAFU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2019/01/the-catholic-cultural-revival.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-65643420307552250012019-01-13T13:09:00.000-05:002019-01-13T13:09:04.850-05:00Father Rutler: Extremism<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UltaSAHKfjU/XDt-Mi5qWDI/AAAAAAAAdU0/S8Um1Sh3HxM7TseWsIJErUtFic2Pi_jmQCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UltaSAHKfjU/XDt-Mi5qWDI/AAAAAAAAdU0/S8Um1Sh3HxM7TseWsIJErUtFic2Pi_jmQCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Father George W. Rutler</b></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: xx-large;">T</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">he foundational documents of our nation</span></b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> were influenced by Catholic political philosophers such as Aquinas,&nbsp;Suárez,&nbsp;Báñez, Gregory of Valencia and Saint Robert Bellarmine, who wrote before theorists like Hobbes and Rousseau. This contradicts a popular impression that democracy was the invention of the Protestant Reformation. Luther and Calvin considered popular assemblies highly suspect. The concept of the Divine Right of Kings, which was a prelude to what we call “statism” and “big government,” was systematized by the Protestant counselor to King James I of England, Robert Filmer.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For all his vague Deism, Thomas Jefferson might have acknowledged those Catholic sources, if obliquely, in his eloquent phrases. The Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion and Article VI’s prohibition of religious tests for public office were developments rooted in the Thomistic outlines of human rights and dignity declared in the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Arbraoth.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This was lost on some senators who have violated Constitutional guarantees by subjecting judicial nominees to religious tests. One senator complained to a Catholic nominee for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” Two other senators said that the President’s nominee for a federal district court in Nebraska was unsuitable because his membership in the Knights of Columbus committed him to “a number of extreme positions.” Members of their political party consider opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion “extreme.” This would characterize the Pope as an extremist, but at least he is not a judicial nominee.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the Statuary Hall of our nation’s Capitol are sculptures portraying heroes who represent the best of the history and culture of each state. They include Saint Junípero Serra of California, Saint Damien de Veuster of Hawaii, Declaration of Independence signer Charles Carroll of Maryland, Father Eusebio Kino of Arizona, General James Shields of Illinois, Chief Justice Edward Douglass White of Louisiana, Father Jacques Marquette of Wisconsin, Patrick McCarran of Nevada, Dennis Chavez of New Mexico, John Burke of North Dakota, John McLoughlin of Oregon, Mother Joseph of the Sacred Heart Pariseau of Washington, and John Edward Kenna of West Virginia, all of whom were Catholic. These canonized saints, statesmen, soldiers, jurists and pioneers would be extremists unworthy of public office in the estimation of some current senators for whom subscription to natural law and obedience to the Ten Commandments are violations of what they fantasize as the norm of moral being.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The coruscating illiteracy of such senators burlesques reason. At every performance of Mozart’s&nbsp;<em>Don Giovanni</em>, audiences wait for the fifth scene of the second act, when the haunting statue of the Commendatore comes alive and knocks on the door to the sound of trombones. Would that all those statues of some of our nation’s greatest figures might come down from their pedestals and challenge the vacant minds of those inquisitorial senators to explain what constitutes extremism.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot;, times, baskerville, georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/WA4gXJecJgw" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2019/01/father-rutler-extremism.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-7003411881087357442019-01-05T15:17:00.001-05:002019-01-05T15:17:25.860-05:00Father Rutler: Herod's Heirs<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v13t8bNX1Q4/XDEQJJK-ZcI/AAAAAAAAdUc/9-tbAvaCMws68rUMVXwD7o-jZS8FaIWogCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v13t8bNX1Q4/XDEQJJK-ZcI/AAAAAAAAdUc/9-tbAvaCMws68rUMVXwD7o-jZS8FaIWogCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><b>Father George W. Rutler</b></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: xx-large;">R</span><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">esearching the Birth Narrative of our Lord on the computer can be a source of unintentionally mordant humor. </span></b><span style="color: #222222; font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">On one of the prominent encyclopedia sites, we are told in the entry for King Herod that “most scholars agree” that he was entirely capable of massacring the Holy Innocents in Bethlehem. But the same source, under the entry for Holy Innocents, says “most scholars agree” that the account was a myth, since no one would do such a thing.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">The emperor Augustus, who was content to have Herod as a client ruler, punned in Greek that he would rather be Herod’s pig (“hys”) than be his son (“huios”).&nbsp;Herod had murdered three of his sons along with one of his wives and a brother-in-law, not to mention three hundred military officers who were abrasive to his paranoia, even though he had 2,000 bodyguards from as far away as what now are France and Germany. Augustus was appalled by the crassness of Herod, rather as the Nazis, for all their malevolence, were taken aback by the sadism of the Soviets in the Katyn Forest and the insouciant viciousness of the Vichy leaders.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">To this day, remnant stones and bulwarks testify to the large-scale engineering wonders with which Herod impressed and intimidated the populace: the extension of the Second Temple, the Herodium and Masada fortresses, the port town of Caesarea Maritima, which was enabled by his development of hydraulic cement, and his shipbuilding industry made possible by the asphalt he dredged from the Dead Sea.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">The Wise Men from the East, whatever else they were (and we do not know precisely from where they came or how many they were) were good psychologists. They quickly seized upon the paranoia of Herod and outwitted him, provoking the massacre of male infants two years old and under. The historians Josephus and Nicholas of Damascus do not record that slaughter because the victims were babies, and for Roman chroniclers, babies were not as important as adults. Contrary to the inspired Jewish religion, the dominant protocols of the Western world permitted the killing of infants by the&nbsp;<em>paterfamilias</em>&nbsp;for any reason, including inconvenience, deformity and birth control. In Sparta, only a child strong enough for development into soldiery had a right to life.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">By an indult of Providence, and in contradiction to many “virtue-signaling” cynics, our current Executive branch of government has become the most pro-life since&nbsp;<em>Roe v. Wade</em>, but that is a fragile assurance and one with no promise of permanence. There are vastly more infanticides now than in Herodian Bethlehem. If our civilization lasts two thousand years more, there may be a “majority of scholars” who will say that in 2019 there were people capable of such iniquity, and another “majority of scholars” who will insist that people back in 2019 could never have been so cruel.</span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-top: 10px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/d-dYcoXnm_8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2019/01/father-rutler-herods-heirs.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-63803429928632132282019-01-04T11:12:00.001-05:002019-01-04T11:12:20.020-05:00The Duke: Portrait of Prince Philip<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/HUWt95NQTkU" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9xuaLV7hbU0/XC-FPixGukI/AAAAAAAAdUE/dPpiuhfrBQQMeO63pp3EdOptPZtwpFu7gCLcBGAs/s1600/decorative.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="28" data-original-width="239" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9xuaLV7hbU0/XC-FPixGukI/AAAAAAAAdUE/dPpiuhfrBQQMeO63pp3EdOptPZtwpFu7gCLcBGAs/s1600/decorative.gif" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/a2SF5lcTYhY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2019/01/the-duke-portrait-of-prince-philip.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-18733113298750122012018-12-31T12:19:00.001-05:002018-12-31T12:19:25.972-05:00Father Rutler: All Creatures of Our God and King<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tB7XwG1bQqs/XCpNeYSG8EI/AAAAAAAAdTs/b2xtamBf2Y4veRo9X2OhS5gM7gcEHHdDwCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tB7XwG1bQqs/XCpNeYSG8EI/AAAAAAAAdTs/b2xtamBf2Y4veRo9X2OhS5gM7gcEHHdDwCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><b><span style="color: blue; font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: xx-large;">C</span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;">hristians in the Indian state of Kerala are about 20% of the population.</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif; font-size: 18px;"> An amateur film recorded there shows some workers struggling with a power shovel to rescue a baby elephant from a ditch. I do not know if they were Christians, Hindus, Muslims or a mix, but they succeeded. The happy juvenile dashed back to its herd, and as the adult elephants formed a line to depart, they raised their trunks in salute to the rescuers. That was one example of their enigmatic sensibility. That they have long memories is no myth: they can remember watering holes from years back; they can communicate by subsonic rumbles along the ground faster than sound can travel through air; they have rituals for mourning their dead; and they peacefully spend sixteen hours a day eating, which is more than the average New Yorker.</span> </div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Every creature has gifts that science is gradually discovering, such as the almost mathematically improbable migratory habits of penguins and the telescopic vision of hawks. These are prodigies of God’s extravagant love. The Christ Child arranged to be born in a makeshift menagerie rather than in a hotel where pets might not have been allowed. This Child “. . . is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature . . .&nbsp;&nbsp;And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (Colossians 1:15, 17). Animals at least could provide some body warmth, which in that fragile first moment of the Child’s exposed human nature was more important than any rhetoric, and more practical than the lofty song of angels.</span></span></div></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">It may not be too fanciful to think that, as a donkey can live up to forty years, God’s providence might have arranged for a donkey in that stable to be the one that the Child grown into manhood rode into Jerusalem. At least it was some donkey, that with its hellish bray and flapping ears looked like the “devil’s walking parody” as Chesterton said, but equipped for that final triumph with “a shout about my ears, / And palms before my feet.” In 1898 Kaiser Wilhelm II entered Jerusalem on a white horse. In 1917 General Allenby pointedly entered on foot. A scraggly donkey was the most royal beast, for the rarest jewel of rulers is humility. “See, your king comes to you, righteous and victorious,&nbsp;lowly and riding on a donkey” (Zechariah 9:9).</span></span></div></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Perhaps at Christ’s coming, with their sensory gifts we cannot yet fully understand, the animals in the stable knew more about the Holy Child than humans realize. In that first Christmas moment, they were able to do what only saints in heaven can do, for they gazed upon the face of God.</span></span></div></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">“The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them” (Isaiah 11:6).</span></span></div></div><div style="line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/y0fY2OZr3gA" width="560"></iframe></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div></div></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/vHI80VhZkX4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/12/father-rutler-all-creatures-of-our-god.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-46164000978535593542018-12-25T15:23:00.000-05:002018-12-25T15:23:06.974-05:00 A Christmas Message from President and Mrs. Trump<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1Sf0Onz3JzQ" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/pMAz_fKpaCY" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/12/a-christmas-message-from-president-and.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-80802935607497569642018-12-25T10:07:00.000-05:002018-12-25T10:07:27.284-05:00Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's Christmas Broadcast 2018<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mv8kG31cSr4" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bUHJGgGALTg/XCJHSBBBqJI/AAAAAAAAdTI/jpNAFX8aYX8rfPfip4VjNlyn_6yd0a5dwCLcBGAs/s1600/decorative.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="28" data-original-width="239" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bUHJGgGALTg/XCJHSBBBqJI/AAAAAAAAdTI/jpNAFX8aYX8rfPfip4VjNlyn_6yd0a5dwCLcBGAs/s1600/decorative.gif" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/q7yWfKo9OJc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/12/her-majesty-queen-elizabeth-iis.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-32130732130346542632018-12-01T20:32:00.000-05:002018-12-01T20:37:07.004-05:00Father Rutler: Holy Reminders<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-edT7BzFj3mk/XAM11RfxScI/AAAAAAAAdSY/QSANhlPuQroLJOwwMhllyuuy309dthEywCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-edT7BzFj3mk/XAM11RfxScI/AAAAAAAAdSY/QSANhlPuQroLJOwwMhllyuuy309dthEywCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-size: 18px;"><span style="font-family: &quot;times new roman&quot; , &quot;times&quot; , &quot;baskerville&quot; , &quot;georgia&quot; , serif;"><b><span style="color: #741b47;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">A</span></span></span> <span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">bishop condescendingly asked John Henry Newman, “Who are the laity?”</span></b><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> To which the great saint, and, one hopes, future Doctor of the Church, replied that the Church would look foolish without them.&nbsp;</span></span></span><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">The same might be said of those who are consecrated in the Religious life. The difference is that most of the Church consists in laypeople, while monks, nuns, and other consecrated Sisters and Brothers are a small fraction of the People of God, but are needed to remind all the baptized that our true home is in heaven. The distinctive habits that they wear are reminders of their role.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Since the Second Vatican Council, many ill-advised Religious have abandoned conventual life and even those Religious habits. It was an abuse of the Council’s modest prescriptions for updating the consecrated life, and in fact, it often fostered dissent from the Faith itself. Since 1965 the number of women Religious in the United States has dropped from 181,421 to fewer than 47,000 today. Eighty percent are older than 70, so the death rattle is ominous in at least 300 of the 420 Religious institutes. Yet, many refuse to admit their mistakes, rather like the definition of insanity:&nbsp;“Doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">But there is also a dramatic upsurge in Orders that live the traditional counsels, teaching, caring for the poor and sick, and not wasting their time in “workshops” on climate change and nuclear weapons.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Some of these new communities are growing dramatically: the Dominican Sisters of the Sacred Heart, the Carmelite Sisters of the Most Sacred Heart of Los Angeles, and our own New York-based Sisters of Life (who share our parish’s hospitality), among others.&nbsp;The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, whose mother house is in Michigan, have grown in just twenty years to more than 140 Sisters with an average age of 32. They teach in preschool through college throughout the United States and this coming year will open another large convent in Texas for 115 sisters.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">A choir of these Sisters in their traditional habits was invited to sing at the lighting of the National Christmas Tree in Washington. This is a big change from just a few years ago when an earlier Administration threatened to sue the venerable Little Sisters of the Poor for maintaining Catholic moral principles.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">The Advent season bids us to think more deeply about Death, Judgment, Heaven and Hell. The Religious are consecrated to remind the faithful about these Four Last Things. “See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction.&nbsp;<sup>&nbsp;</sup>For I command you today to love the&nbsp;Lord&nbsp;your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the&nbsp;Lord&nbsp;your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess” (Deuteronomy 30:15-16.).</span></span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/3uDkzuLpZo4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/12/father-rutler-holy-reminders.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-74831028146055528022018-11-17T19:08:00.002-05:002018-11-17T19:08:49.622-05:00A Message from The Queen to The President of The United States of America<div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="The British Monarchy" class="crest-desktop" src="https://www.royal.uk/sites/all/themes/tbm/_assets/img/crest.png" /></div><br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">“Prince Philip and I offer our deepest sympathies to the people of California, who continue to suffer from the devastating fires across the state.<br /><br /> "Our thoughts and prayers are with the family and friends of the victims, and to all those who have lost their homes and livelihoods. I pay tribute to the courage and dedication of the US emergency services and the volunteers that have provided support."<br /><br /> <div style="text-align: center;">Elizabeth R </div></blockquote><br /><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/xWQueY1tosU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/11/a-message-from-queen-to-president-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-21893673996887037002018-11-12T10:40:00.000-05:002018-11-12T10:48:52.112-05:00Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance, 2018<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZIEQakyZtdI" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Huw Edwards presents the Royal British Legion's annual Festival of Remembrance from the Royal Albert Hall in London. In the presence of Her Majesty the Queen and members of the royal family, Sir Tom Jones, Sheridan Smith, Sir Bryn Terfel, Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones, Sheku Kanneh-Mason and the Kingdom Choir perform alongside the Central Band of the Royal Air Force and the Band of HM Royal Marines.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">On the eve of the centenary of the Armistice, the event is a tribute to the remarkable generation who contributed to the First World War.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/NeHmu41ZY9s" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/11/royal-british-legion-festival-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-53841011422661505312018-11-11T00:00:00.000-05:002018-11-11T00:00:04.981-05:00President Trump "The Proud Commander In Chief" - Veterans Day Tribute<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ssgMkF74fOI" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/y_t_BIgNLJA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/11/president-trump-proud-commander-in.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-50745351260121626072018-11-10T13:47:00.000-05:002018-11-10T13:47:24.750-05:00Father Rutler: The Great War<div style="text-align: justify;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jtMiEvEVXo0/W-cm7DqQa4I/AAAAAAAAdSA/RHpvQt10iGocIqqpgswwaGlQqg9Am-n2gCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jtMiEvEVXo0/W-cm7DqQa4I/AAAAAAAAdSA/RHpvQt10iGocIqqpgswwaGlQqg9Am-n2gCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Father George W. Rutler</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">P</span></span>ier 54 on the Hudson River is a short walk from our church.</b> On display are pictures of the&nbsp;<i>Titanic</i>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<i>Lusitania</i>, which is not encouraging for public relations. The Titanic was supposed to berth there, but instead the&nbsp;<i>Carpathia</i>&nbsp;arrived with surviving passengers. Seven years before, my grandmother had sailed on the&nbsp;<i>Carpathia</i>.<br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">The sinking of the&nbsp;<i>Lusitania</i>&nbsp;by a German U-boat brought the United States into the Great War. Film footage shows passengers arriving at Pier 54 to embark on May 1, 1915. Of the 1,962 passengers and crew on the&nbsp;<i>Lusitania</i>’s manifest, 1,198 died. Toscanini had planned to be on board, but took an earlier ship after bad reviews of his performance of&nbsp;<i>Carmen</i>. Jerome Kern missed the ship when his alarm clock failed—otherwise, we’d not have “Ol’ Man River” and “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” The dancer Isadora Duncan cancelled her ticket to save money, and the actress Ellen Terry backed off because of war jitters.<br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">One casualty of the&nbsp;<i>Lusitania</i>&nbsp;sinking was Father Basil Maturin, Catholic chaplain at Oxford University, returning from a lecture tour. He spurned a lifeboat and gave away his life jacket. That was reminiscent of Monsignor John Chadwick, later pastor of the Church of Saint Agnes here in Manhattan, who barely survived the sinking of the&nbsp;<i>Maine</i>&nbsp;which incited the Spanish-American War. The monsignor was hailed as a hero by the sailors he saved.<br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">If his chauffeur had not taken a wrong turn on the streets of Sarajevo in 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand might not have been assassinated, and the domino effect of national alliances would have not brought on the collapse of empires. At the Somme, more than one million troops were killed or wounded, and the war’s total casualties were 37.5 million dead or wounded. One year after the war, there was only one man between the ages of 18 and 30 for every 15 women. Each town and school in Britain has memorials to those lost. Both of my own grandmother’s brothers were killed in Ypres, and that was considered the norm. The United States lost 116,000 men with over 200,000 wounded. Europe has never really recovered. Military strategists were not prepared for modernized combat, and it has been said that the armies were lions led by donkeys. In a macabre way, the chief winners of that cultural suicide were Lenin and Hitler.<br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Today is the one-hundredth anniversary of the Armistice signaled by a bugle at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the year. The poet Siegfried Sassoon, decorated for bravery, was latterly put in a psychiatric ward for begging an end to the killing. He became a Catholic and is buried near the grave of Monsignor Ronald Knox whom he admired. In tribute to one of his fallen comrades, he wrote:</span></span> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">I know that he is lost among the stars,&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"> <i>And may return no more but in their light.</i></span></span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"></div><br/><br/><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/vDTMA_NNdQg" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/11/father-rutler-great-war.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-20378900324190819512018-11-08T19:02:00.000-05:002018-11-08T19:02:26.531-05:00The Queen: Her Commonwealth Story<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7RLHXIkKJkk" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/IDxiKuyIXHI" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/11/the-queen-her-commonwealth-story.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-14278062968905765552018-11-03T12:12:00.001-04:002018-11-03T12:16:14.608-04:00Father Rutler: The Prayer to Saint Michael<div style="text-align: justify;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ISpwEjdmSC8/W93IkKJUT-I/AAAAAAAAdRQ/G2mrU1JHbU0yTGOQ_XqDhsOAnYS_u0X5wCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ISpwEjdmSC8/W93IkKJUT-I/AAAAAAAAdRQ/G2mrU1JHbU0yTGOQ_XqDhsOAnYS_u0X5wCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Father George W. Rutler</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><b><span style="color: #a64d79;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">N</span></span></span>ostalgia is a selective editing of the past.</b> For instance, there are those who wish we had today some of the architects of thirteenth-century cathedrals, but who avoid mentioning thirteenth-century dentists. In recent times, the general conceit has been the opposite of nostalgia. The philosopher Owen Barfield spoke of "chronological snobbery," defined as the belief that "intellectually, humanity languished for countless generations in the most childish errors on all sorts of crucial subjects, until it was redeemed by some scientific dictum of the last century."&nbsp; <br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">That snobbery had its heyday in the past generation, which defined itself as mankind finally “come of age.” Were that true, we should now be in the stage of incipient senility. Catholics are suffering from that period’s destructive arrogance. Just look at the circular churches and ugly music that replaced venerable shrines and chants. Characteristic of that polyester period was the underestimation of evil, which Pope Benedict XVI noticed even in some assertions of the Second Vatican Council. Without explanation, the Prayer to Saint Michael was dropped from the liturgical books in 1964. But “Satan and all the evil spirits” have not politely gone away.</span></span> </div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">That prayer was promulgated by Pope Leo XIII in 1884. Accounts variously claim that he was inspired by a vision of horrors to come in the twentieth century. Its use remained a private option after recitation of the prayer was dropped from the end of Mass, but in 1994 Pope Saint John Paul II, from his experience of travails in his native Poland, was not inclined to underestimate the power of the wickedness and snares of the devil: “I invite everyone not to forget it, but to recite it to obtain help in the battle against the forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Far from having “come of age,” chronological snobs have learned the hard way that theirs has been a prolonged adolescence. In our present cultural chaos, faced with moral decadence all around, the pope and bishops have asked that the Prayer to Saint Michael be restored at the conclusion of each Mass. In our parish we have not had to reinstate it because we never ceased to offer that prayer after Mass, sometimes to the consternation of a few who thought it retrograde. When the Barque of Peter is tossed by storms, it is time to bring the life jackets out of the storage where some liturgists hid them.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Our church is providentially dedicated to Saint Michael, and a month ago the&nbsp;<i>Catholic News Service</i>&nbsp;published a photograph of our own statue of him, based on the famous painting by Guido Reni. Generations ago, the people of “Hell’s Kitchen” knew that Michael and his sword would be a better defense in battle than liturgical dancers and the balloons of chronological snobs. They also knew, as Baudelaire said, that “The devil’s greatest trick is to persuade us that he does not exist.”</span></span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/ManegT0C75A" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/11/father-rutler-prayer-to-saint-michael.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-36559665267517105002018-10-28T13:39:00.000-04:002018-10-28T13:39:16.456-04:00Homily of His Holiness Benedict XVI for the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EJP6-q4hrdM/W9XzooNU-pI/AAAAAAAAdQ4/tlqNeJDP6MUrstd6UoAUvS2mT5pRArqkQCLcBGAs/s1600/Benedict%2BCoat%2Bof%2BArms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="253" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EJP6-q4hrdM/W9XzooNU-pI/AAAAAAAAdQ4/tlqNeJDP6MUrstd6UoAUvS2mT5pRArqkQCLcBGAs/s200/Benedict%2BCoat%2Bof%2BArms.jpg" width="126" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="style2" style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><strong><a href="http://www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/libretti/2012/20121125.pdf"> HOLY MASS WITH THE NEW CARDINALS</a></strong></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i><span style="color: #663300; font-size: medium;">HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI</span></i></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: center;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><em><span class="style2">Vatican Basilica<br /> Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe<br /> Sunday, 25 November 2012</span></em></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><em>Your Eminences,<br />Dear Brother Bishops and Priests,<br />Dear Brothers and Sisters,</em></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Today’s Solemnity of Christ, King of the Universe, the crowning of the liturgical year, is enriched by our reception into the College of Cardinals of six new members whom, following tradition, I have invited to celebrate the Eucharist with me this morning. I greet each of them most cordially and I thank Cardinal James Michael Harvey for the gracious words which he addressed to me in the name of all. I greet the other Cardinals and Bishops present, as well as the distinguished civil Authorities, Ambassadors, priests, religious and all the faithful, especially those coming from the Dioceses entrusted to the pastoral care of the new Cardinals.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In this final Sunday of the liturgical year, the Church invites us to celebrate the Lord Jesus as King of the Universe. She calls us to look to the future, or more properly into the depths, to the ultimate goal of history, which will be the definitive and eternal kingdom of Christ. He was with the Father in the beginning, when the world was created, and he will fully manifest his lordship at the end of time, when he will judge all mankind. Today’s three readings speak to us of this kingdom. In the Gospel passage which we have just heard, drawn from the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus appears in humiliating circumstances – he stands accused – before the might of Rome. He had been arrested, insulted, mocked, and now his enemies hope to obtain his condemnation to death by crucifixion. They had presented him to Pilate as one who sought political power, as the self-proclaimed King of the Jews. The Roman procurator conducts his enquiry and asks Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (<em>Jn</em> 18:33). In reply to this question, Jesus clarifies the nature of his kingship and his messiahship itself, which is no worldly power but a love which serves. He states that his kingdom is in no way to be confused with a political reign: “My kingship is not of this world … is not from the world” (v. 36).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Jesus clearly had no political ambitions. After the multiplication of the loaves, the people, enthralled by the miracle, wanted to take him away and make him their king, in order to overthrow the power of Rome and thus establish a new political kingdom which would be considered the long-awaited kingdom of God. But Jesus knows that God’s kingdom is of a completely different kind; it is not built on arms and violence. The multiplication of the loaves itself becomes both the sign that he is the Messiah and a watershed in his activity: henceforth the path to the Cross becomes ever clearer; there, in the supreme act of love, the promised kingdom, the kingdom of God, will shine forth. But the crowd does not understand this; they are disappointed and Jesus retires to the mountain to pray in solitude, to pray with the Father (cf. <em>Jn </em> 6:1-15). In the Passion narrative we see how even the disciples, though they had shared Jesus’ life and listened to his words, were still thinking of a political kingdom, brought about also by force. In Gethsemane, Peter had unsheathed his sword and began to fight, but Jesus stopped him (cf. <em>Jn</em> 18:10-11). He does not wish to be defended by arms, but to accomplish the Father’s will to the end, and to establish his kingdom not by armed conflict, but by the apparent weakness of life-giving love. The kingdom of God is a kingdom utterly different from earthly kingdoms.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">That is why, faced with a defenceless, weak and humiliated man, as Jesus was, a man of power like Pilate is taken aback; taken aback because he hears of a kingdom and servants. So he asks an apparently odd question: “So you are a king?” What sort of king can such a man as this be? But Jesus answers in the affirmative: “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth hears my voice” (18:37). Jesus speaks of kings and kingship, yet he is not referring to power but to truth. Pilate fails to understand: can there be a power not obtained by human means? A power which does not respond to the logic of domination and force? Jesus came to reveal and bring a new kingship, that of God; he came to bear witness to the truth of a God who is love (cf. <em>1 Jn </em>4:8,16), who wants to establish a kingdom of justice, love and peace (cf. <em> Preface</em>). Whoever is open to love hears this testimony and accepts it with faith, to enter the kingdom of God.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">We find this same perspective in the first reading we heard. The prophet Daniel foretells the power of a mysterious personage set between heaven and earth: “Behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed” (7:13-14). These words present a king who reigns from sea to sea, to the very ends of the earth, possessed of an absolute power which will never be destroyed. This vision of the prophet, a messianic vision, is made clear and brought to fulfilment in Christ: the power of the true Messiah, the power which will never pass away or be destroyed, is not the power of the kingdoms of the earth which rise and fall, but the power of truth and love. In this way we understand how the kingship proclaimed by Jesus in the parables and openly and explicitly revealed before the Roman procurator, is the kingship of truth, the one which gives all things their light and grandeur.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In the second reading, the author of the Book of Revelation states that we too share in Christ’s kingship. In the acclamation addressed “to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood”, he declares that Christ “has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father” (1:5-6). Here too it is clear that we are speaking of a kingdom based on a relationship with God, with truth, and not a political kingdom. By his sacrifice, Jesus has opened for us the path to a profound relationship with God: in him we have become true adopted children and thus sharers in his kingship over the world. To be disciples of Jesus, then, means not letting ourselves be allured by the worldly logic of power, but bringing into the world the light of truth and God’s love. The author of the Book of Revelation broadens his gaze to include Jesus’ second coming to judge mankind and to establish forever his divine kingdom, and he reminds us that conversion, as a response to God’s grace, is the condition for the establishment of this kingdom (cf. 1:7). It is a pressing invitation addressed to each and all: to be converted ever anew to the kingdom of God, to the lordship of God, of Truth, in our lives. We invoke the kingdom daily in the prayer of the “Our Father” with the words “Thy kingdom come”; in effect we say to Jesus: Lord, make us yours, live in us, gather together a scattered and suffering humanity, so that in you all may be subjected to the Father of mercy and love.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To you, dear and venerable Brother Cardinals – I think in particular of those created yesterday – is is entrusted this demanding responsibility: to bear witness to the kingdom of God, to the truth. This means working to bring out ever more clearly the priority of God and his will over the interests of the world and its powers. Become imitators of Jesus, who, before Pilate, in the humiliating scene described by the Gospel, manifested his glory: that of loving to the utmost, giving his own life for those whom he loves. This is the revelation of the kingdom of Jesus. And for this reason, with one heart and one soul, let us pray: <em>Adveniat regnum tuum</em> – Thy kingdom come. Amen.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/WqmkzsnxmCQ" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/10/homily-of-his-holiness-benedict-xvi-for.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-62981153754027984102018-10-22T21:36:00.000-04:002018-10-22T21:36:09.334-04:00RESISTING FRANCIS to his FACE: Standing with Viganò<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PHyFP9nDGdo" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><br /><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/iKpqmvscqa4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/10/resisting-francis-to-his-face-standing.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-5359043662294154382018-10-07T11:24:00.000-04:002018-10-07T11:24:53.597-04:00Father Rutler: The Betrayal of China's Catholics<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2U1S6GBSq4w/W7okafkZWbI/AAAAAAAAdQE/XPZLDpOHMOgKfnunYw6e3a8g2aZsMA_qACLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2U1S6GBSq4w/W7okafkZWbI/AAAAAAAAdQE/XPZLDpOHMOgKfnunYw6e3a8g2aZsMA_qACLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Father George W. Rutler</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><b>The opening line of a children’s poem by Mary Howitt in 1828</b> is a caution for growing up in a duplicitous world: “‘Will you walk into my parlour?’ said the Spider to the Fly.” Christians must be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16) because we are sent as sheep into a world of wolves. So there we have a whole menagerie of metaphors, all making the same point about naiveté.&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">The best diplomacy secures amity, but at its worst it lets loose ministers who are innocent as serpents and wise as doves. Charles de Gaulle, who was not subtle, said, “Diplomats are useful only in fair weather. As soon as it rains, they drown in every drop.” Without succumbing to cynicism, it is possible to see a mixture of calculation and callowness in the provisional agreement between the Holy See and Communist China, recognizing the primacy of the Pope, but at the price of an unclear arrangement giving the government a role in the appointment of bishops.&nbsp;</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Ever since Constantine, and certainly since Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne in 800, ecclesiastical and civil threads have been intertwined. The mediaeval Investiture Controversies were background for the sixteenth-century appointment privileges granted to the French crown and the Concordat between Pius VII with Napoleon. In the year that Mary Howitt wrote about the Spider, nearly five of every six bishops in Europe were appointed by the heads of state. Right into modern times, Spain and Portugal invoked the&nbsp;<em>Patronato</em><em>Real</em>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<em>Padroado</em>, but these involved governments that were at least nominally Catholic. The 1933&nbsp;<em>Reichskonkordat</em>&nbsp;with the Nazi government was not the proudest achievement of the Church. The Vatican’s accommodationist “Ostpolitik” in the 1960s, made Cardinal Mindszenty a living martyr.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Second Vatican Council sought, largely successfully, to reserve the appointment of bishops to the Sovereign Pontiff (<em>Christus Dominus</em>, n. 20).</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">It was my privilege to know Cardinal Ignatius Kung Pin-Mei of Shanghai, who endured thirty years in prison, and Archbishop Dominic Tang Yee-Ming of Canton who was imprisoned for twenty-two years, seven of them in solitary confinement. The eighty-seven-year-old Cardinal Archbishop of Hong Kong, Joseph Zen, sees a betrayal of those who have suffered so much for Christ. Time will tell if the present diplomacy is wise. An architect of this agreement, Cardinal Parolin, said: “The Church in China does not want to replace the state, but wants to make a positive and serene contribution for the good of all.” His words are drowned out by the sound of bulldozers knocking down churches while countless Christians languish in “re-education camps.”</span></span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">A fourteenth-century maxim warned: “He who sups with the devil should have a long spoon.” For spoon we might now say chopsticks. When it comes to cutting deals with governments, it is sobering to recall that of the Twelve Apostles only one was a diplomat, and he hanged himself.</span></span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlock" style="border-collapse: collapse; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; min-width: 100%; table-layout: fixed ! important; text-align: left; width: 100%px;"> <tbody class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockOuter"><tr> <td class="aolmail_mcnDividerBlockInner" style="-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; min-width: 100%; mso-line-height-rule: exactly; padding: 27px 18px 0px;"> <table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="aolmail_mcnDividerContent" style="-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; border-collapse: collapse; min-width: 100%; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%px;"> <tbody><tr> </tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/Ik79IWMTaJc" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/10/father-rutler-betrayal-of-chinas.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-41475931987773722122018-09-22T16:19:00.002-04:002018-09-22T16:19:41.672-04:00Father Rutler: Saint Michael the Archangel<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DYj6oAYdlEM/W6acd2CwdlI/AAAAAAAAdPU/xdjCBRGyQPYMAzEE__JVlc73yjsyNxShgCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DYj6oAYdlEM/W6acd2CwdlI/AAAAAAAAdPU/xdjCBRGyQPYMAzEE__JVlc73yjsyNxShgCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Father George W. Rutler</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><b><span style="color: blue;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><span style="font-size: xx-large;">T</span></span></span>he selection of Saint Michael as our parish’s patron in 1857 certainly was inspired.</b> Who could be a better champion in “Hell’s Kitchen” than that heavenly soldier wielding the sword, as the great statue in our church shows him? As angels are pure spirit and sublime intelligence, it is tempting for mortals of flesh and limited intelligence to pretend that they are fictions, but many times in meeting strangers we may “entertain angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2).</span></span> </div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Michael, whose name means “no one is like God,” leads a combat that is even more violent for being spiritual and not merely political. Spiritual combat is virulent now, when virtually every social institution is confused and angry, and harshly so in the Church, which is more than a human invention and is in fact the “Body of Christ”—that is, his living presence on earth. Our Lord predicted&nbsp;“… that the Son of Man was destined to suffer grievously, to be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes”&nbsp;(Mark 8:31).</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">In 1776 Thomas Paine wrote contemptuously of “the summer soldier and sunshine patriot” who flees when the going gets rough. Such are those who claim to have been&nbsp;baptized as Soldiers of Christ but who flee from spiritual combat when they are scandalized by news of sin. There is a parallel here with what a recent book,&nbsp;<i>The Coddling of the American Mind</i>,&nbsp;describes as a young generation living in a cultural bubble protected from psychological discomfort. They are so cushioned from the hard&nbsp;facts&nbsp;of life that they flee into “safe spaces” when traumatized by reality.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Saint Augustine said, “In addition to the fact that I am a Christian and must give God an account of my life, I as a leader must give him an account of my&nbsp;stewardship as well.”&nbsp;Church leaders who have been chortling glad-handers cannot give a good account because they have been summer solders and sunshine patriots. When the clouds gather, and battle lines are drawn, they are unable to confront what Belloc called Satan’s&nbsp;“comic inversion of our old certitudes.”</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">It has actually been suggested that Satan is exposing the sins of men in order to discourage the faithful. But the Prince of Lies exposes nothing. He has long been the cover-up artist. The Holy Spirit does the revealing: “For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come abroad”&nbsp;(Luke 8:17).&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">“Saint Michael the Archangel, protect me against the ruses and temptations of Satan. I consecrate to you all the faculties of my soul, my soul itself and all its potentials. Guard well the weaknesses of my poor nature, that the many battles that I may undergo will become as many victories and the eternal glory of the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.”</span></span></div><br/><br/> <img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/7CTrAqqbNAE" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/father-rutler-saint-michael-archangel.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-32805505542175272652018-09-21T08:51:00.000-04:002018-09-21T09:00:34.732-04:00How an Obscure Italian Hospital Became the Eye of a Global Storm<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">This is the story of an Italian hospital, controlled by the Vatican, and its history of corruption, graft, and bankruptcy.&nbsp; Keep in mind as you read this shocking story that the Peronist on the Chair of&nbsp; St. Peter has all sorts of ideas about the ills of capitalism and how capitalist countries need to follow his prescriptions for financial reform.</span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NS0cNI2Ov3Y/W6TomBgrkHI/AAAAAAAAdPI/O1VnsOWm-LorOgwhdJAqtqINBnNmFeNYQCLcBGAs/s1600/IDI-787x513.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="513" data-original-width="787" height="260" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NS0cNI2Ov3Y/W6TomBgrkHI/AAAAAAAAdPI/O1VnsOWm-LorOgwhdJAqtqINBnNmFeNYQCLcBGAs/s400/IDI-787x513.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The Istituto Dermopatico dell'Immacolata, or IDI. (Credit: Associated Press</span></b>.)</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">ROME - In February 2013, in his last official act as pope, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI appointed a commissioner for a small, seemingly insignificant hospital in Rome, the Immaculate Dermatological Institute (IDI).</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Two years later, that same hospital was at the center of a tug-of-war between Australian Cardinal George Pell and the Vatican’s Secretary of State. Today, IDI is deepening the rift that threatens to tear apart the Church in the U.S., and to poison its relationship with Rome.</span> </blockquote><blockquote class="tr_bq"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">To understand what makes this hospital such a lightning rod, one needs to look at the path that led what was once a symbol of excellence in Catholic healthcare to the brink of ruin and almost $1 billion in debt.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In just three years, IDI has received three major infusions of cash from the Vatican and the Italian government, amounting to well over $70 million, and each time opinions were split between those who wished to save the institution and those ready to pull the plug.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">What was once a Roman story drew global attention when the U.S.-based Papal Foundation, charged with financing the pope’s charitable initiatives, was asked by Pope Francis to help IDI with a $25 million payment. The request divided the foundation, with mostly clerics on one side supporting the pope and mostly lay people on the other skeptical of an institute many see as a poor investment at best, corrupt at worst.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b> </b></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Read more at <a href="https://cruxnow.com/global-church/2018/09/20/how-obscure-italian-hospital-became-the-eye-of-a-global-storm/"><i>Crux</i></a> &gt;&gt;</b></span></div></blockquote><br/><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/q5IlTmMQoG4" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/how-obscure-italian-hospital-became-eye.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-86457350747593448002018-09-18T10:37:00.000-04:002018-09-18T10:48:35.630-04:00Did Communists Insert Sinners Into Seminaries?<div style="text-align: left;">This sermon is the clearest, most powerful explanation you will ever hear of evil in the world, of the corruption of the Church, and indeed, of the demonic forces which currently hold the Church captive at the highest level.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gL1RvQdj7Bc" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/DdcM8bBwAII" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/did-communists-insert-sinners-into.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-36452247935196028032018-09-16T13:10:00.000-04:002018-09-16T13:10:23.835-04:00R. R. Reno: Catholicism After 2018<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4e4e; font-family: &quot;Sorts Mill Goudy&quot;,Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,Times,serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span class="drop-cap" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; display: block; float: left; font-family: &quot;Sorts Mill Goudy&quot;,Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,Times,serif; font-size: 4em; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 1.1; margin: 0px 0px -0.2em; padding: 0px 0.2em 0px 0px; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">T</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; color: #4d4e4e; display: inline ! important; float: none; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;">heodore McCarrick has been stripped of his status as cardinal for pursuing young men throughout his clerical career. “­Uncle Ted” liked to take his “nephews” to bed with him. The public revelations of this fact evoked outrage. It was not so much that a churchman sinned as that he did so with impunity, protected by the see-no-evil mentality and, perhaps, the complicity of those who have their own secrets to keep. The anger was further stoked by an initial wave of denials. McCarrick’s protégés—some now bishops—ran for cover, insisting they knew nothing about his misdeeds.</span></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4e4e; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I was not shocked by the news. I entered the Catholic Church in 2004, two years after clerical sex abuse of adolescent boys and its cover-up were exposed in Boston. We learned that many of the bishops of the United States—perhaps nearly all during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—did little to root out priests who preyed upon boys and adolescents. Men who made a habit of grooming altar boys as sexual prey were shuttled from one parish to another. Pressure was exerted to keep aggrieved parents silent. Victims were stiff-armed. Insofar as there was strenuous episcopal effort, it was devoted to keeping a festering problem secret. The recently released Pennsylvania Grand Jury report deepens our knowledge of this pattern of behavior.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4e4e; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The moral corruption and the failure of those in charge to deal with it properly is disheartening but, for me, ­unsurprising. From 1990 until 2010, I taught at a Jesuit University and was privy to insider gossip. The Irish philosopher William Desmond recounted some of his experiences as a young scholar visiting Fordham in the 1970s. The main debate in the Jesuit dining room concerned whether or not sodomy constituted a violation of the vow of celibacy. Some priests took the line that celibacy concerns the conjugal act, not sterile sex between men. A friend who spent time as a Jesuit novice during that slouching decade told me that novice masters regarded homo­sexual relations as healthy, even necessary for proper priestly formation. Sometimes the novice masters insisted that they be the agents of this “formation.”</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4e4e; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">The passing of the decades brought changes. I don’t think there is quite the same spirit of open experimentation abroad in the Church today, not even among Jesuits, though I may be too sanguine. Since the revelations about McCarrick, a number of younger men have recounted hair-raising stories about their experiences in corrupt seminaries, events that took place after 2002 and public outrage about clerical sexual abuse. Whether or not things have gotten better—and, again, I think they have—the past shapes the present. It wasn’t long ago that homosexual sex wasn’t just tolerated among clergy; it was protected. And it still is in some quarters, as McCarrick’s career indicates. Were it not for revelations about sex with a minor and abuse of power, he would have remained a much-feted ecclesiastical eminence. He was part of a much larger quasi secret about gay clergy that implicates even the best of men, undermining them in the way that unaddressed, openly tolerated corruption destroys the morale of any unit.</span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4e4e; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>Read more at <a href="https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/10/catholicism-after-2018"><i>First Things</i></a> &gt;&gt;&nbsp;</b></span></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: #fcfcfc; box-sizing: border-box; color: #4d4e4e; font-family: &quot;Sorts Mill Goudy&quot;,Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,Times,serif; font-size: 18px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: 400; letter-spacing: normal; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; text-align: justify; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b>&nbsp;</b></span></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/dJ8LleQEbRU" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/r-r-reno-catholicism-after-2018.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-33616698132264238812018-09-15T17:12:00.002-04:002018-09-15T19:46:51.149-04:00Father Rutler: The Axle on Which Our World Turns<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ck3tyeX_UYU/W51y41uVIVI/AAAAAAAAdOk/XeMrmH5lGag0pMwN_j0RxqcVjs8Yhnp6QCLcBGAs/s1600/rutler4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="217" data-original-width="265" height="163" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ck3tyeX_UYU/W51y41uVIVI/AAAAAAAAdOk/XeMrmH5lGag0pMwN_j0RxqcVjs8Yhnp6QCLcBGAs/s200/rutler4.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;">Father George W. Rutler</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; font-size: xx-large;">ON</span></span> the ninth of October in 1845,</b> Blessed John Henry Newman was received into the Catholic Church by the Passionist priest Blessed Dominica Barberi. On the 150th Anniversary of that meeting of saints, to the very hour, I had the privilege of offering Mass in the little room where it took place. <br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Newman’s decision was hard, as he had devoted his life to many souls whom he would have to leave. On September 25, 1843, he preached his sermon of farewell—“The Parting of Friends"—in the church he had built. This means that next week will be its 175th anniversary. His sermon ended with lines that belong to literature as well as to piety:<br /><br /><i>And, O my brethren, O kind and affectionate hearts, O loving friends, should you know any one whose lot it has been, by writing or by word of mouth, in some degree to help you thus to act; if he has ever told you what you knew about yourselves, or what you did not know; has read to you your wants or feelings, and comforted you by the very reading; has made you feel that there was a higher life than this daily one, and a brighter world than that you see; or encouraged you, or sobered you, or opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed the perplexed; if what he has said or done has ever made you take interest in him and feel well inclined towards him; remember such a one in time to come, though you hear him not, and pray for him, that in all things he may know God's will, and at all times he may be ready to fulfil it.</i><br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Some years before, Newman had traveled to Italy where he entered unfamiliar churches: “I neither understood nor tried to understand the Mass service—and I did not know, or did not observe, the tabernacle Lamp—but now after tasting of the awful delight of worshipping God in His Temple, how unspeakably cold is the idea of a Temple without that Divine Presence! One is tempted to say what is the meaning, what is the use of it?”<br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Newman would later realize the effect of the Blessed Sacrament reserved for adoration, and what he said could describe our situation on 34th Street: “It is really most wonderful to see this Divine Presence looking out almost into the open streets from the various Churches . . . I never knew what worship was, as an objective fact, till I entered the Catholic Church.”<br />&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;arial&quot; , &quot;helvetica&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Ours is a restless city, and no more serene these days is this earthly part of the Holy Catholic Church. Visitors stop by hourly to look at our building, and whether known or not, the axle on which our world turns, often shakily, is that Presence with the candle burning by it.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/Y1LFnhKOY0I" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/father-rutler-axle-on-which-our-world.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-86517119357047504472018-09-11T05:00:00.000-04:002018-09-11T05:00:06.951-04:00"Men of Freedom", Written September 11th, 2001, Performed by the Cadet Glee Club of West Point<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/MbWu4URevd4" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/oFPEK6MvRjA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/men-of-freedom-written-september-11th.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-70205203027207837352018-09-10T06:00:00.000-04:002018-09-10T06:00:02.025-04:00An Interview With Henry Sire, Author of 'The Dictator Pope'<div style="text-align: center;"><iframe allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/QpMdawyly6c" width="560"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/73FNwA9zbzA" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/an-interview-with-henry-sire-author-of.htmltag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1370764850032156076.post-57100387081937501502018-09-09T15:56:00.000-04:002018-09-09T15:56:37.549-04:00Father Rutler: A Rare Gift<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RDk2Svn6LkI/W5V6KPhfryI/AAAAAAAAdOM/gQTqaimbUjQsNMBkMvL6ZIJpVXI0mdiKQCLcBGAs/s1600/Rev.-George-W.-Rutler_avatar_1401662624-75x75.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="75" data-original-width="75" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RDk2Svn6LkI/W5V6KPhfryI/AAAAAAAAdOM/gQTqaimbUjQsNMBkMvL6ZIJpVXI0mdiKQCLcBGAs/s1600/Rev.-George-W.-Rutler_avatar_1401662624-75x75.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Father George W. Rutler</span></b></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;"><b><span style="font-size: xx-large;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,&quot;Times New Roman&quot;,serif;">A</span></span> </span>rare gift is to be the pastor of a parish,</b> and one&nbsp; of its greatest benefactions is a fatherly part in the lives of so many people.&nbsp; One thinks of the film “Good bye Mr. Chips” when the venerable schoolmaster sees in his memory’s eye all the lads he had taught over generations,.&nbsp; That is why at each Mass there is a timeless family reunion, when all the departed of the parish are invoked at the altar.&nbsp; I do not envy prelates and other officials who, albeit obedient to their vocation, have not had long experience as a pastor.&nbsp;</span></span> </div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">This struck me recently when I received a newly published four volume set of a collection of my pastoral letters going back many years, and elegantly bound in leather: “A Year with Father Rutler.”&nbsp; Perhaps the bindings are superior to the content.&nbsp; This was not my initiative, and&nbsp; I had&nbsp; little to with it.&nbsp; Much of what is worthy in the pages is the work of the editor, Duncan Maxwell Anderson.&nbsp; His family is a model of the blessings of a pastor, for I received Duncan into the Church, married him to his super wife, baptized all four daughter and son who serves often here as an altar boy, married the oldest daughter and recently baptized her first baby. So the generations move on, and these end of summer days I think lines from the “September Song” which was first performed on Broadway in 1938 with music by Kurt Weill:&nbsp; "For <em>it's a long</em>, <em>long time,/From May to December</em>,/<em>And</em> the winds grow cold,/<em>When</em> they reach September<em>,</em>" &nbsp; Even surpassing the beautiful wistful music are those lyrics by Maxwell Anderson, the distinguished playwright, novelist, and songwriter.&nbsp; Our good parishioner&nbsp; Duncan is named for his grandfather who wrote those words.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> </span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 18px;">Moving from May into September, it may be said without understatement that this has not been an uneventful summer. &nbsp; What we may make of events in the Church as they unfold remains to be seen, but for the faithful, the consideration of corruption and dishonesty in its many forms, can only move one to thankfulness that the Lord who cleansed the Temple of thieves is now at work exposing and wiping away what has sullied the holiness of the Church for which our Lord died to give us.&nbsp; Like resetting a broken limb, the process is not gentle but the result will be of inestimable good.&nbsp; As no on is born without an assignment vouchsafed to God alone, it is a special honor to be chosen by our Creator to live in days of salvation history which by their critical nature require that those alive now be nothing less than what Saint Paul described: “… servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Here, furthermore, it is sought in stewards that one be found faithful” (1 Corinthians&nbsp;4:1-2).</span></span></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="color: #222222; font-size: 16px; line-height: 150%; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/SunlitUplands/~4/GIqjeRbYZs8" height="1" width="1" alt=""/>Daniel Cassidyhttps://plus.google.com/112849142826927116236noreply@blogger.com0http://www.sunlituplands.org/2018/09/father-rutler-rare-gift_9.html